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"The first complete English translation of Manbaʿ Uṣūl al-Ḥikma (The Source of the Foundations of Wisdom), a comprehensive compendium on the foundations of the letter sciences attributed to the thirteenth-century Sufi master Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni. This work is among the most systematic of al-Buni's treatises, presenting the operative principles of letter magic, magic squares, divine names, and talismanic construction in four sustained treatises.
The first treatise, "The Principles and Governing Rules of Wisdom", establishes the foundational theory: the correspondence of the twenty-eight Arabic letters to the four elements, the seven planets, and the twelve zodiacal signs. Al-Buni explains the extraction of angelic names from numerical compounds, the determination of auspicious times for writing, and ...>>
